Where is the Baby? (16 page)

‘Do you live nearby?' she asked, able to see why people would be frightened by him, with the wild red-brown hair to his shoulders and shapeless bushy beard, the shabby clothes. His eyes, though, were gray-green, clear and direct, not the eyes of someone intent on harm. She'd seen killer eyes in prison: they were flat and dull, bereft of curiosity, dead. This man's eyes reflected intelligence and curiosity. And his soft-spoken, apologetic manner spoke of education and a gentle nature.

‘My place is about a half-mile past here,' he answered, ‘at the top of the big hill.' He pointed at an upward angle and she pictured the hill that crested behind her property.

‘Why were you out in the middle of a storm, Mr Baines?'

‘Hay,' he corrected. ‘Would it bother you if I smoke?'

‘No, it wouldn't.' She turned and got a saucer from the cabinet, placing it on the battered table. Then she watched as he pulled a pouch from his pocket and efficiently rolled a cigarette. It took her back and, without thinking, she said, ‘Joe Seven Moons used to roll his own.'

‘Seven Moons?' Hayward asked.

‘He was Paiute-Shoshone. He and his wife Alba managed my grandmother's ranch.'

‘You're from out west?'

She nodded, her black hair gleaming with reflected light, then turned away to busy herself taking paper-wrapped packages of cold cuts from the refrigerator.

Hay lit his cigarette and looked over at the window, the view almost entirely obscured by the snow. ‘I was on my way home from an emergency repair job,' he at last answered her question. ‘Thought I could get back in time.'

‘A repair job?'

‘I'm what I guess people call a handyman.' He shrugged and took a drag on his cigarette. ‘I get odd jobs here and there, and I work in the kitchen at The Farm.'

‘The Farm?'

‘It's a retreat just outside of town. Pretty famous in this part of the world.'

‘A retreat,' she repeated. ‘For what?'

‘For people dealing with alcoholism.'

‘Oh!' She nodded again as she began preparing sandwiches. ‘What sort of handy work do you do?'

‘Some carpentry, some electrical. This morning it was a plumbing problem: had to replace the ballcock valve on an overflowing toilet. Mind if I ask your name?'

She turned, saying, ‘I'm sorry. My name is Tally,' and made a mental note: remember to introduce yourself.

‘Interesting name. Short for something?' he asked, before taking another drag on his cigarette.

‘Natalie.' With a slight frown, she said, ‘I didn't think there were any houses at the top of the hill.'

‘There aren't. I've got a campsite with a shed I put together from bits and pieces.'

‘Are you a squatter, Mr Baines?'

He smiled. ‘I might be,' he admitted. ‘As far as I know, I'm on state land. But I could well be a squatter.' He thought about the track he'd created over time – undoubtedly illegal – that ran off the main road and took him to the top of the hill where a turnaround, worn into the ground from repeated use, allowed him to park and reverse back onto the track. A hundred years earlier he'd have been considered a homesteader; nothing illegal about his actions.

‘Have you been up there long?' she asked.

‘A few years, four or five.'

‘I can see how appealing it might be for most of the year, but it must be rough in the winter.'

‘It can be tricky but I've managed so far. I've picked up things here and there, so the shed's well insulated and I've got a kerosene heater.'

‘What do you do if you get snowed in?' she asked, curious. ‘And how do people reach you when they require your services?'

‘I read, mainly,' he said. ‘Oil lamps. And I've got a battery-operated radio-cassette player. As for reaching me, I've got a CB radio hooked up to a little generator that powers a few necessities in the shed, and another CB in the truck.'

‘It sounds like an efficient set-up,' she said, reaching for two mugs. ‘How do you take your coffee?'

‘Cream or milk and two sugars. You sure I can't help?'

‘No, thank you. Coffee and sandwiches are within my skill range. I plan to try my hand at a stew later.' She waved at an assortment of winter vegetables on the countertop as she brought a mug over to the table.

Again he was silenced for several seconds by the way she looked, and covered by busying himself putting out his cigarette. Then he took a sip of the best coffee he'd had in a very long time. ‘Coffee is definitely within your skill range,' he said. ‘This is a fine brew.'

‘It is good,' she agreed. ‘I've been trying out a lot of different blends but I think I'll stick with this one.' She finished assembling the sandwiches, sliced them diagonally and brought the plates and two napkins to the table. Sliding into the chair opposite, she looked briefly over at the window.

Seeing her wedding ring, he asked, ‘Your husband caught in the storm?'

She looked at him blankly, then saw his gaze fixed on her hand and said, ‘I'm a widow.'

‘Oh, man, I'm sorry.'

‘This is my first snowstorm,' she said, changing the subject. ‘It's nothing like I imagined it would be.'

‘What did you imagine?'

‘Something more cinematic,' she said with the faintest of smiles, holding her mug with both hands, ‘with better visibility.'

He smiled, showing good teeth, and she wondered how he could maintain any kind of hygiene living in a shack, even with a generator.

‘The higher up you are in this part of the world, the less visibility you're going to have in a genuine nor'easter, which is what we're having right now,' he explained.

‘A nor'easter?'

‘This qualifies. We're in an Arctic high-pressure system with clockwise winds. Strong northeasterly winds pull the storm up the east coast and it meets with cold Arctic air blowing down from Canada. When the two systems collide, you've got yourself an honest-to-God nor'easter.'

‘You sound like a schoolteacher,' she said, with that same faint smile.

‘What I've got is a head full of useless facts.'

‘That wasn't useless. It was most informative. Please eat.'

‘This is very kind of you,' he said again.

‘Mr Baines—'

‘Hay,' he corrected.

‘Have you eaten today, Hay?'

‘No, I have not.'

‘Are you hungry?'

‘I am.'

‘Then it is a practical measure, nothing to do with kindness.'

‘Now
you're
sounding like a schoolteacher,' he said with humor in his expression.

‘I, too, have a head full of useless facts.'

‘I see you're stripping the wallpaper in the dining room. Maybe I could lend a hand.'

‘That would be most appreciated,' she said, biting into the turkey and Swiss with dill mustard on pumpernickel bread.

‘This is
good
,' he said appreciatively.

‘It is, isn't it,' she agreed. ‘I'm still not used to real-world food yet.'

He studied her, trying to interpret the meaning of the sentence. She didn't look as if she were recovering from some illness. And from the way she lowered her eyes, he had the impression she regretted having said what she had. He knew how that felt, so he let it pass. If she wanted to explain, she would. If she didn't, she wouldn't. Either way, he knew all too well that you couldn't make people do one damned thing if they didn't want to. You couldn't change people; couldn't force events; you just had to work the steps and try to live in the moment. And he was actually enjoying the moment.

I
t was something remembered: an activity or domestic chore performed with another person. Cohabitation had been such a brief part of her life that it was easily forgettable. But still, this time shared had a pleasant resonance, reminding her of when she was young and believed in possibility and the future. Fifteen years later, all but burnt-out synapses were sparking to life. She could no more control that process than she could the busy, swirling snow. She couldn't will herself back into the benumbed state that had helped her survive the years in prison.

She and this burly man worked in companionable silence but for the occasional comment about the job at hand, their efforts accompanied by Paganini, then by Mendelssohn, and the remaining wallpaper came down quickly. He was easy to be around, emitting no waves of tension or impatience; he seemed just to
be
, reminding her again of Joe Seven Moons. Some people were enviably contained, with no obviously frayed edges demanding attention, in need of mending. They finished the job in just over two hours.

‘What do you plan to do about the paneling?' he asked, picking residual paper shreds from his scraper before depositing it in the bucket of thick, sticky water. ‘There's probably fine wood under that nasty paint.'

She took a step back to scan the walls. ‘It
is
nasty,' she agreed. ‘I hadn't actually given it any thought. I just assumed it would be repainted.'

‘These Victorian houses have good finishes. There could be maple or walnut or even cherry under there.'

‘You're interested in old houses?'

‘Only in passing, or historically. The historical part has to do with having grown up in a big Victorian.'

‘So did I,' she said. ‘Hundreds of years ago.'

‘
Hundreds
of years,' he repeated, noting that she hadn't asked him where his growing-up had taken place. Most people couldn't resist openings like that. ‘Way back, when, as the song goes,' he said, ‘the world was young.'

‘Yes,' she said, her eyes on the near window which was entirely snowed over. Allowing herself a bit of free association, she continued: ‘It's like being in an exotic cave.' She paused, gazing at the whitened expanse. Then, ‘Are you proposing to strip the wood?' she asked, turning to look at him.

‘I was just making an observation.'

‘Would you be interested in doing the work?' she asked, somehow knowing as she asked that he didn't need money and wasn't soliciting her for a job.

He had to pause and take a slow breath. She watched with interest, seeing another dimension to him – one that was a little jittery, a little injured.

‘Truthfully,' he said, ‘I wouldn't be. You'd probably be just as happy going ahead with painting it.' He was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. Just like that. It was crazy, the way he could without warning find himself on the verge of a chasm, like skydiving without a chute. He hated it, worked so hard to get it all under control.

‘You don't like to say no, do you?' she observed cannily, quietly.

‘It's a problem,' he acknowledged. ‘I'm in the process of learning how.'

‘It's a hard thing to learn. How about some fresh coffee?'

‘That'd be good,' he answered, relieved to get off the topic. For a long, awful moment he'd feared finding himself stuck with a job he didn't want, simply because he had such difficulty saying no. And she'd sensed that, which surprised him. In his experience, most beautiful people – of either gender – didn't give a good goddamn how other people felt, what they cared about or feared. But this woman wasn't like anyone else he'd ever encountered. She seemed to be tuned to a wavelength unknown to the general population. Considering that notion, he decided she lacked guile. She was beautiful and forthright – he found it a rare combin-ation. This was a first in his experience of people which, admittedly, didn't exactly set world records. He'd never been the life of the party. At best he was a reluctant attendee who instinctively tried to disappear into the first available corner where he was content simply to observe the goings-on, a fact that was a perpetual small sorrow to his ever-popular father, the truly charming and always elegant Hayward Baines the Second. There had been a time when Hay would have made any sort of Faustian deal in order to have his father's social assets. But he had ultimately conceded that it was never to be.

‘I'd be like you if I could,' he told his father in a rare confessional moment during a visit home before his deployment. ‘I hate to be a disappointment to you.'

And his father said, in that voice that drew people to lean close so as not to miss a word, ‘You're never a disappointment, son. Never, no matter what. Your mother and I just want you to be happy, to enjoy life. That's all. You take good care and come home safely to us.'

Life was a jokester, loving nothing better than ironic turn-about – killing the father and saving the shambles that had once been the sober son so full of promise.

‘I'll just wash my hands, if I may,' he said as she added her scraper to the bucket, then lifted it to take to the kitchen for emptying.

‘Please help yourself. You can use the bathroom down here or one of the ones upstairs. I'm going to dump this and then get another pot of coffee going. I've got some wickedly good cookies I picked up yesterday at the bakery.'

‘The pralines or the chunky chocolate?' he asked.

‘Both. They're the best cookies I've ever had.'

‘They are,' he agreed, and they exchanged a smile.

Curious to see the rest of the house, he elected to go up to the second floor, where the filtered snowlight lent the quartet of unfurnished bedrooms with their wide-beamed floors and naked patchy walls a dated quality – like old-fashioned sepia-tinted prints. Struck by the effect, he lingered for a moment, studying each unfurnished room before stopping in the doorway to the large master bedroom. He took in the sleeping bag and pillow on the bare floor of the otherwise empty room. With paired windows on two walls and a fireplace centered on the wall to the right of the door, the snowlight and bareness gave the space an ascetic feel. He took a step back and continued on to the hall bathroom.